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Brownstone Wall Collapse in Brooklyn Forces Evacuations

The side wall of a brownstone in Carroll Gardens collapsed early Monday morning, forcing evacuations and disrupting subway service for a few hours along nearby lines, the police said.

The police said no one was injured after the wall of 241 Carroll Street, a brownstone that abuts an alley behind Public School 58, collapsed around 1:10 a.m. But more than a dozen people in the building and an adjacent brownstone were not allowed to return to their homes on Monday morning, the police said.

“We’re going through a lot,” said Sisi Schneider, 43, who owns the building with her husband, Howard, 45, and lives there with their three children. The couple rent apartments in the building to two other families. A total of 14 people live in the brownstone, she said, including 8 children.

The whole building will most likely have to be demolished, she said. “It’s a loss, but we’re happy no one was hurt,” Ms. Schneider said.

Images of the scene posted by WABC News show the wall of the building ripped almost completely off and the inside rooms exposed.

There was an application approved for contracting work currently in the building, but no work was being done there, Ms. Schneider said. “We didn’t do any construction,” she said.

She attributed the collapse to the lack of lateral support on the alley side. The building was built in the 1860s, she said, but had undergone “slow unsettling” since the 1950s, when in order to build the public school building, an adjacent brownstone was taken down.

She said her family was staying with relatives nearby and the city had been “amazing” in helping her tenants.

Subway service, disrupted in the immediate aftermath of the collapse, had been restored by the morning rush to the nearby F and G lines.

The building was on the market for $3.5 million in 2008, according to StreetEasy, but property records show it had not been sold. The Schneiders bought it for $1.54 million in 2004, according to records.

Tony Sclafani, the chief spokesman for the Department of Buildings, said that the department was investigating the cause of the collapse but that because of structural instability, the building would be have to be taken down immediately. “The demolition work is to start today,” he said.

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